Lineker

Key distinction:

The issue is not about refusing all immigration, it's about appropriately controlling illegal immigration and ensuring that the legal channels support the right balance of skills and talents into the country.

I don't believe the illegal channels to the UK are made up of fully qualified doctors, nurses and care home assistants.

In that case, we are all f*cked because todays figure would be close to £45K which basically means that unless you are paying higher rate tax you aren't contributing - that is a completely unsustainable model.

It is unsustainable, the government does too much.

It’s not popular to look back at historic events but Tony Blair and Gordon Brown cast a long shadow.

How much debt did Bliar and the rest of the Blair witch party leave us in?

Absolutely this. Unfortunately, Brexit has completely scuppered our chances of success, so bust and double bust it will be.

That utter nonsense ignores the reality of what they did.
University sector expanded to the extent it went from being an educational experience to a lifestyle. As this expansion required the introduction of fees it saddled a generation with a mountain of debt, and skewed the skills base against vocational training leading to, as we’ve recently seen, shortages of key workers from truck drivers to plumbers.
They screwed up the GP contract to the extent that you can’t see one, at the same time increasing their pay to the extent that a significant proportion are part time.
They privatised the NHS through PFI, an overhead we are still paying for in financial costs from the contracts and the various facilities that were redundant before they were built.
They put us on a path to Brexit by changing our relationship with Europe through the Lisbon treaty.
All this before mentioning Iraq and the impact that has had on the current migration crisis, Brown flogging off the gold and opening the doors to migration without a corresponding increase in house building and infrastructure.
All the above had an effect on the credit card leaving us, more specifically your children, with a deficit that really requires all the above to be unpicked.

We had a huge debt created by Labour, we had to get that down. We then had the Covid effect and the Ukraine war effect, none of which was caused buy the tories rather they had to react to them.

Should they have dropped the supported workers like a stone? What would the other option have been?

If this is distasteful, think back to the statements made by the corbyn shadow cabinet and how much they would have borrowed, we are miles better off than we COULD have been.

I'm a bit late but just wanted to add my view of Lineker. Having read some of his tweets I don't think he's so thick that he doesn't understand "things" so I suppose unless he's right on everything, and I don't think he is, that leaves deliberate misrepresentation for some reason or that he's perhaps so caught up in identity politics and virtue signalling that he's lost any objectivity he should have and just wants or believes his POV to be the truth. I don't know. I suppose there is another possibility, i suppose it's possible that he knows he tweets things that aren't strictly so for self advancement of some sort or just the good feeling he gets from likes and retweets.

On asylum seekers a significant number of the people coming across the Channel are clearly not asylum seekers by any definition much of the public would accept, and by that I mean they're not fleeing an ongoing war or any obvious persecution for religious, ethnic or lifestyle reasons. The majority are "fighting age men" rather than families or even fragments of families and although I forget the percentages the biggest single group by far appears to be fighting age men from a country which some would see as a holiday destination. Of course that wouldn't mean that persecution is impossible in their home country but I'd hope that any issues could be known. So what are they? True asylum seekers every last one? Economic / better life migrants?

As some may know I married a foreigner and I talk to immigrants and indeed I talked to one today who came here as an asylum seeker. If we continue to allow significant numbers of people to come here as asylum seekers pretty much unchecked from a security and suitability and even a right to be here and live here POV I think we run into issues of fairness and trust and of course if we have any sort of quota or financial constraints anyone self identifying as an asylum seeker without real justification takes the place of or takes recourses away from someone in genuine and real danger or need and likely places additional burdens on tax payers and systems and infrastructure here. That's cold but maybe true.

I don't think Lineker is thick so what does that leave? Malicious intent? Self promotion? Loss of objectivity because he lives in a privileged bubble? I can't know. All I can do is have an opinion and I think he's a virtue signalling gobsh!te with delusions of grandeur.

Sorry if that upsets any fans

And a PS, sorry to go on...
The hoops and expense me and Mrs WW have had to jump through begin to look a little unfair when compared to people who can arrive by whatever means and don't have to pass a B1 English or Life in the UK test. I wouldn't pass that Life In The UK test. Anyway. One worry I have is that people with radically different cultures or behaviours might not just upset pearl clutches but may also commit serious crimes either within their own immigrant groups or against the wider population. There perhaps should be a strict process to go through in the same way that there is for legal immigration. Perhaps there should be education and tests to be passed and binding commitments made so that people know, recognise and accept laws and cultural norms and are informed that serious transgressions will be grounds for deportation, regardless of any stated risk to the immigrant.

I have a friend who many years ago used to work for a security service. They told me, and I believe them, that some people they deported were met off the plane, taken away and executed. That's sad but if we have people who are incompatible with peaceful law abiding life in the UK I suppose we have three choices, fly them out to possibly face prison, torture of death back home, put them in prison in the UK or turn a blind eye in case someone calls us racist.

The national debt was almost double 2010s levels before Covid hit so without that and the Ukraine war we were already heading for massively increased debt. I can't say that Labour would have done better (bearing in mind that had they won in 2017 or 2019 it would have been PM Corbyn running the show).

My issues with child services are not an isolated point. The people they're failing are the people we need to grow up and pay taxes to ensure the country thrives in future. The Tories shut all the surestart centres, cut funding to CAMHS at a time when child mental health needed more support, not less and have underfunded schools to the point that children have to spend lessons wearing their coats because the government failed to provide extra money for heating this winter and is demanding they use existing school budgets to pay for the teachers pay rises whilst trying to take political credit for them. And children's services is just one area the Tories have mismanaged our country. Everything else they've touched in the last 10 years from transport to energy and food security has been beset by failure.

I'm not a Starmer fan and I'm still a long way from knowing what he really stands for so this is not an argument that he should be in charge but an explanation of my anger at how the Tories have spent 13 years making our country a worse not better place to live. And it isn't "utter nonsense" to point out what a bunch of self serving c**ts they really are.

Well the current government increased both whilst managing to also reduce services to below an acceptable standard so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make?

I think we need a new party not made up of the usual suspects with the usual backgrounds.

I used to think I was quite left wing. I believe that we need to support those who can not support themselves but should this, not supporting yourself, be a lifestyle choice? I don't think it should and that could make me far right but I don't think it's right to take finite recourses for yourself as every penny given to someone who would rather sit at home on social media or the playstation smoking marijuana or drinking premium strength larger taking handouts rather than working and at least in part support themselves is a penny not available to those in real and genuine need. Is that left or right? I don't know.

I believe that some things are far too important to leave to private or otherwise companies and companies owned by foreign governments. I'd like to see some things which are crucial to a functioning society state owned. This could include water and utilities and basic infrastructure and transport and there should be functioning well resourced armed services, police and health service etc. I suppose that's left leaning but I'd run them efficiently as every penny they waste would be a penny not available to do good with. There'd be no sleeping through the night shift in my world view and I suppose that pulls me a little to the right.

Overall I still think I'm quite to the left but the metric seems to have shifted so far now on so many issues that I just can't see myself voting for anyone on "the left." The Tories may be a shambles led by someone imposed after a coup and the ripping up of their own rule book but at the moment I can't vote Labour or LibDem and I'm just hoping against hope for a change.

Billy Connelly said something like "Don't vote, it only encourages them" but I think we have to vote if only to keep the worst of them out and that's probably what I'll do, vote for the least worst option and at the mo the local Con who IMO only got in on an anti anti Brexit ticket seems to be at least trying on local issues so I'll probably vote for him.

Ah yeah, something Independent, the Independent party, but covering the whole of Great Britain, Great British Independent Party.  Sounds ok. Hum, not as good as the United Kingdom Independent Party, I've got it, UKIP! What could possible go wrong?

Maybe we could have PR and force them into at least considering the options instead of the tribal nonsense.

I heard some bleating from the SNP at the weekend complaining about the unelected Prime Minister. Apart from the fact that we don't have Presidential elections and instead vote for a party, exactly what do the SNP want us to call their new "unelected" First Minister when they are promoted to power? Politicians - duplicitous, misleading, more than a little economical with the truth and totally and utterly self interested - unfit for purpose in other words.